Three Moves Ahead

Len sits down with Secret Door's Shane and Alan Dabiri, two Blizzard veterans currently working on tactical RPG Sunderfolk and its roguelike sibling, Shadowstone. We reminisce about the golden age of the RTS and dive deep into designing abilities and enemies and managing randomness in run-based tactics games.

Len and long-lost prodigal cohost Ian gird themselves for the apocalypse in Total War Warhammer: Lords of the End Times. We discuss the new factions, the new crisis mechanics, and how not even a walking god of death is scarier than what happens when you outsource your Shogun 2 remaster to the lowest bidder.

Len sits down with Endless Legend 2 game director Derek Paxton and game designer Julien Gueguen to talk about the 1.0 release of Endless Legend 2, how 4X devs iterate on feedback, and how they managed to put out 60 major updates in the course of a year.

SPOILER ADVISORY: This episode contains character spoilers throughout (if you don't want to be spoiled on which classic Star Wars archetypes can be recruited, or which movie characters make cameos). PLOT SPOILERS for the big mid-game time skip begin at 48:05 and conclude at 1:14:09.

Jon and Luke are joined by PC Gamer's Ted Litchfield to discuss Star Wars Zero Company, a tactics game in a galaxy far, far away from several of the developers of NuXCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns. We discuss our favorite characters, why you should never give firearms to an astromech droid, and all of the other things that make this one of the best Star Wars games in a parsec.

Len and Nerium are joined once again by special guest Diana to discuss a lot of the smaller games we played this summer that didn't make it into a full episode, our varying levels of EU5 addiction, and mechsploitation.

Games Discussed:

Sovereign Tower

Dispatch

Suzerain

EU5

Civ 7 Test of Time

Mortal Shell II

Elden Ring: The Convergence

Big Walk

The Great Villainess: Strategy of Lily

Twisted Tower

Endacopia

Openfront.io

Len, Jon, and Fraser set sail with Corsair Cove, a pirate city-builder with a reckless disregard for building codes. We discuss our different buccaneer building styles, the card- and dice-based ship combat, and try to answer the eternal question: what DO you do with a drunken sailor?

Len sits down with Game Director Marv Gouw and Consulting Art Director (and Relic co-founder) J. Aaron Kambeitz to talk about ZeroSpace, a new RTS inspired by the greats of the genre with BioWare-style cutscenes and story decisions. We dig into the odd place RTSes find themselves in the industry right now, how the "Homeworld look" relates to typefaces, and how the changes in the games industry today echo those the film industry went through decades ago.

Len and DM are joined by the current Age of Empires II world champion, Hera, to discuss the state of the game in 2026. We try to explain its longevity, examine what it takes to be a top-level esports player, and discuss Hera's streamer invitational tournament, The King's Gauntlet.

Len and Jon are joined by PC Gamer's Evan Lahti to Slay the Spire once again in the roguelike deckbuilder sequel. We discuss why our intrepid host is so bad at this game, if she can even be helped, and what the wackiest combos we've seen so far look like.

Len, Jon, and Sin gear up and get ready to die on the first turn to some BS in Xenonauts 2, a sequel to a throwback to a classic tactics game. We discuss how it stacks up to the old school UFO Defense, the Firaxis reboots, and the best Noah Wyle show, Falling Skies.